Another year ends and I find myself looking at everyone’s wrap up of the year which has been. Many taking the opportunity to join in with the Golden Pint awards. I thought about doing the same but when I went through the categories I realised just how crap I’ve been this year.

I mean best foreign beer, looking back I can only think of about four. That makes it really difficult to judge best foreign brewer. Best retailers? My beers this year were about 50% Supermarket 40% at the pub and 10% beer festivals. I can’t think of any independent retailers that I visited and I definitely didn’t buy any beers online.

OK, so best book or magazine? I read three, all by Pete Brown, which were really good, but I can’t really say with any authority that they were my favourite because I have nothing to compare them with (although I don’t quite know what else would beat them, they were brilliant reads).

What I can tell you is that my favourite beer this year was B & T‘s Fruit Bat. This is probably the only category in the Golden Pint’s which I feel that I have done enough drinking. Also I have to take my hat off to whoever at Thwaites is in charge of their Twitter account. Some how this person has managed to find a different way of saying “We hope you enjoyed your beer” every time I had one of their drinks, and this year I was quite partial to a can of their Dark Mild.

Hopefully 2013 will bring me more beery delights to try and enjoy. Hopefully I will have more luck in going places to enjoy beer and hopefully I’ll be able to blog about them. I’m not going to make a promise, because then it is doomed to failure, but I will try to seek out more and expand my horizons. Hopefully in 2013 I’ll be able to write my Golden Pint’s of the year with a broad range of past experiences which I can judge from. If not, I’ll just re-write this post.

Here’s to a great 2013.

Enjoy yourselves.

Happen New Year, let’s make it a good one.

Cheers! Salut! Cin Cin! Yamas! Prost!

(By the way if your looking at the time this posted and thinking “Hasn’t he got anything better to do on NYE than sit in and write this crap, don’t worry, I’m currently out somewhere in London. This was written yesterday and scheduled to post now”)